Web sites, i.e., sites on the World Wide Web, that provide access to multiple web pages separated into multiple topic areas provide vast amounts of information in one central location. The web pages can include documents, articles, graphics, animation, sound, etc. that have particular relevance to a topic area of the web site. Hyperlinks to web pages with articles are placed in topic area web pages that are accessed from a base web page. For example, a news web site, e.g. MSNBC.com, includes a home page with hyperlinks to topic area web pages, such as business and sports. The topic area web pages include hyperlinks to web pages with articles, etc. pertinent to the topic area web page. A topic area web page can also include hyperlinks to subtopic area web pages that include hyperlinks to still other web pages.
In the past, user navigation through the type of web sites described above has been quite tedious because a user has only been able to access a desired web page from the topic, subtopic or other web page that contains a hyperlink to the desired web page. For example, assume that a user has just finished reading a baseball game summary contained on a web page that was accessed via a hyperlink included on a subtopic web page titled "Baseball" that was accessed via a hyperlink included on a topic web page titled "Sports" that was accessed via a hyperlink included in a topic web page titled "News". If such a user wants to read an article on the President that is located on a web page that is reached via a hyperlink included on the subtopic web page titled "Government" that is reached via a hyperlink included on the topic web page titled "News", the user would have to back out to the baseball summary web page through the "Baseball" and "Sports" web pages to the topic web page titled "News" and, then, access the subtopic web page titled "Government" followed by accessing the web page with the article on the President. Often web sites have links to the top-level categories (topic areas) on each of the web pages, thereby removing the need for the upward journey through the hierarchy, but the subsequent downward journey is still required.
Topic and subtopic web pages within a web site are still the primary location for hyperlinks that give access to multiple web pages with articles. As a result, topic or subtopic web pages tend to be longer than what can appear on a single screen. When web pages are longer than what can appear on a single screen, a viewer must scroll the page in order to view all the hyperlinks to web pages containing articles. In usability studies scrolling has be shown to be an underutilized resource. As a result, many web pages are not accessed simply because users do not scroll through web pages to locate the included hyperlinks. This results in a loss of advertising revenue in situations where advertising revenue is tied to web page access. The more a web page is accessed by users, the more the owner of the web page can charge for advertising space on that web page.
In a first attempt to resolve this lack of usability, a partial navigation feature was added to a web page to allow a user to directly access web pages in another part of the web site without having to progress through the web site as described above. This technique did not fully solve the problem, because the partial navigation feature contained access to only a portion of the articles in the web site and web pages were still being designed to require scrolling to provide access to many web pages. The reason why this navigation feature was only a partial navigation feature relates to the feature's use of a flat datafile to generate user interactive menus. Flat datafiles occupy a large amount of memory and take a significant amount of time to download. FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate flat datafiles of the type used by this partial navigation feature. The datafiles are voluminous because each entry occupies multiple lines. One of the lines is designated for identifying where the entries headline would be located in user interactive menus generated by the partial navigation feature. A web site with a few hundred web pages may require a datafile a hundred or more pages long. A datafile of this size might take several minutes to download.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide user friendly access to all the web pages or articles on a web site without increasing download time. The present invention is directed to providing a software based method and apparatus for providing such access.